


Prologue

by Selestiles



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Nightmares, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-01-15 07:59:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18494722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selestiles/pseuds/Selestiles
Summary: Your story begins like this: locked in a cold dark cell with no memory of how you got there, a strange man is sitting in the corner, watching you silently.





	1. Chapter 1

_Where am I?_

The cold is a living thing. A dark, persistent creature that wraps it’s spidery fingers around his throat. It seeps into his bones and takes hold of his limbs. It steals the breath directly from his lungs and makes it dance in front of his face. He’s stopped shivering a long time ago.

_Where am I?_

His heart is outside of his body, it must be. Because it is thrumming all around him, pouring blood over his skin, thick like molasses, warm like bourbon trickling down his throat. The pain is blinding. And if he is even still alive then he won’t be for much longer.

_Where am I?_

Is the wind screaming? Or is it him? He can never tell, sound is always strange and loud and foreign in his ears. He remembers the sound of falling, quiet in his ears compared to the gasp he made when his brain realized there was no ground under him. He remembers waking up to deafening silence, then again to people muttering in a language he doesn’t understand. It is deep and guttural and strange and he doesn’t understand.  _He doesn’t understand…_

_Где я?_


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a special kind of insanity in remembering.  
  
Just a few seconds, stretched into a semblance of eternity. The soft, cream colored curtains, fluttering in the breeze of your open window. It should’ve been closed. A scream that stretches the corners of your mouth. And the night, black and starless, not a single soul to witness as you are taken from everything you know.  
-

When you awake everything is different.  
  
The floor is cold and hard against your skin, but you don’t dare move, not even to shiver. Because even though you’re facing the dark concrete wall, and even if your breathing is all that you can hear, you know that you’re being watched.  
  
There is a gaze like a touch creeping up your spine. And it holds you so still with terror that you don’t even know if you’re still breathing.  
  
So you wait, there’s nothing else to do. You count to ten and then to one hundred and then to ten once more. You close your eyes harshly until your eyelids burn, trying to remember how you got here. But it’s no use, the same memory plays again and again each time until frustrated tears slide down your face and onto the floor. You can feel the gap in your memory like an open wound.  
  
You sing two whole songs in your head and then the chorus of three others. You try to remember as many countries as you can and then their capitals. But then you stop.  
  
Because you can hear it. Quiet as the wind whispering through the grass on a cold, winter night. You can hear him moving behind you.  
  
And you can’t bear it a second longer. Your whole body aches right down to your bones from the cold and the stillness, and your mind burns with dangerous curiosity. So in a moment of weakness, you turn around.  
  
You can’t help the gasp that tears from your throat. Sitting in the shadows is a man, cloaked so completely in darkness that it looks as if he himself is made of shadows. His features are hidden, but you can just make out long, unkempt hair and a mask that looks suspiciously like a muzzle.  
  
Why are you here? Imprisoned in the same cell as this terrifying character. Is he a prisoner or a guard? Thinking about the answer makes your blood run cold.  
  
“Hello” your voice rasps against your throat on the way out, but it can’t be helped. You feel like you’ve been left out in the desert to dry.  
  
He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even acknowledge that he heard you, he keeps so still and silent that if it weren’t for the strand of dark hair fluttering in front of his face with every breath you would’ve thought him a statue.  
  
You try sitting up, stretching out your sore limbs slowly and watching him intently for any signs of movement. He remains still and silent. But his eyes, sharp and soulless, follow your every move.  
  
Perturbed, you stand up carefully, you avoid facing the strange man directly but look at him out of the corner of your eye at all times. Your head hurts, and when you’re upright the room spins for a second before righting itself. You use the wall for support as you walk slowly to the door. It looks to be made of metal. Heavy and dark like iron, with only a small barred window to connect it to the outside world. It doesn’t have a handle. And pressing your face to the bars and to look as far as you can doesn’t prove to be very useful. You can see maybe five feet of hallway from either side of the window, and that doesn’t tell you much. The floor is tiled and white, like a hospital. That’s all you know.  
  
You’re certain it’s been hours since you woke up, and since then nothing has happened. No one has come to check on you, your mysterious cell mate hasn’t even moved. You turn to glance behind you. Predictably, he hasn’t moved an inch.  
  
You aren’t wearing much, but at least you remember these clothes to be the same ones you were taken in. Just a loose pair of sleep shorts and a ratty t-shirt. Unfortunately, the cold damp nature of the cell you’re in means that it isn’t anywhere near comfortable. You’re cold, and hungry, and the ‘bed’ inside the cell looks about as comfortable as the floor.  
  
You want to know why you’re here.  
  
“Hello!?” You call out into the hallway, your voice shakes with disuse and fear.  
  
“Заткнись” he spits. And you startle so hard that your body slams against the door. The noise makes you fold into yourself.  
  
"What?” You manage, heart still beating in your throat. The man hasn’t changed positions, but his eyes are squinted at you. Considering.  
  
“Be quiet” he says gruffly. And then “there’s no way out.”  
  
You stay there, silently looking at each other for a couple of moments. Then he adjusts against the wall and looks away. 


	3. Chapter 3

On the third day since you’re captured you tell him your name. He doesn’t tell you his.

You’re not sure why you do it. It might be because of the way the silence wraps around you like a cloud of smoke, or maybe it has something to do with the realization that no one is coming for you. You’re most likely not getting out.

You work from home, have barely any friends and no known family. It will probably take a very long time for anyone to notice you’re gone, and even then it’ll probably only be your landlord coming to check why you haven’t paid the month’s rent.

Your jailers don’t seem to have any intentions of letting you go, although they haven’t made their intentions clear at all. It can’t be money, or leverage, or… you remember the tiles on the outside of your cell; white and clean and sterile-looking. You shudder.

They give you food and water at random times, so there’s no way to track the time. Always the same meal of stale bread, dry meat and flavorless gruel. But by the time they feed you you are already so hungry that you don’t care. You find that breaking the bread and dipping it in the gruel makes it easier to chew, and washing the meat down with a sip of the bottled water helps it go down. The man that lives in the cell with you eats methodically, always after you’re finished and always starting with the meat, then the bread, and finally tipping back the bowl of gruel. He finishes his water in three long gulps and then pushes the tray to a corner of the room and continues to brood against the wall.

It is while he’s tearing a piece of meat with his fingers that you utter your name. He looks at you, pausing his actions.

“That’s my name” you explain. He hasn’t talked to you except to silence you when you’d first arrived. But for some reason his presence is… not comforting, perhaps just reassuring.

Someone knows where you are, even if you haven’t met before. Someone knows what this place is, even if he hasn’t told you. Someone would know what happened to you, even is he’d have no one to tell. Someone would know your name.

Although what is he supposed to do with it?

His only reaction is the deepening of his frown, and then he continues to tear into his food as if you hadn’t said a word. You lean your head against the door with a great heaving sigh.

-

He has somewhat of a routine. He sleeps sometimes, the only difference from when he’s awake is that now his eyes are closed. After a few times where you both sleep against the wall your back starts to hurt. And you figure if he won’t take the bed then you will (calling it a bed is a kindness, really it’s just a slab of concrete sticking out from the wall, a thin white sheet stretched over it).

Sometimes he paces around the cell like a prowling lion, one of the sad ones from the zoo. Back and forth, back and forth, until he stops, blinks, and sits back down on the floor. If his expression gave anything away you could maybe say he was anxious, but it says eerily placid, so that it looks like he’s just trying to erode a straight line into the floor.

He exercises, on some days. Does push-ups for so long he’s starting to lull you, like a metronome. Sometimes you join him, though he pays you no mind. You sit next to him and do sit-ups until you hurt, laying on the floor and panting while he continues without breaking a sweat.

It’s so dull you almost forget you’re imprisoned. That is until one day the doors blast open with a bang so loud that it echoes inside the cell like it’s the inside of a gigantic bell. You shrink into yourself with a yelp, covering your ears while two men, dressed in black and armed to the teeth, burst into the room. They add to the noise by yelling to each other in a language you don’t understand, gesturing wildly towards the man, who is now standing tense and alert in a corner. The disturbance is so sudden and loud that you practically fall out of the bed in an attempt to get up, your heart is beating painfully hard and your head is still spinning.

“Wait!” You yell as they launch towards your cellmate. They ignore you, but one of them pulls out a taser and shocks the man on the stomach, even if he hadn’t done anything “Hey!! What the hell?! What’s going on?!”

The man doubles over with a grunt, but doesn’t go down. They’re pulling him out of the cell, you realize, and he’s just letting them drag him out. A deep dread sinks into your stomach like a stone. You’ll be alone. Perhaps the thought is selfish, but this man has been your only company for however long you’ve been in this place, silent as he may be. And now they’re shouting and hurting him and desperation is taking hold of you, moving you like puppet-strings. You push one of the intruders with all your might, using your fear to fuel your strength. He stumbles, caught off guard. And the stoic face of your companion shows surprise just before they throw you bodily back into the cell, left to watch as the only emotion you’ve seen in the man’s eyes disappears behinds the heavy iron door.

-

You know how he feels now. Pacing back and forth, back and forth, light unchanging and silence muffling your steps like cotton. You must wait for hours, uncertain if they’ll bring him back or if you’re next. If you let yourself think for more than a minute you’re choked by tears, so you don’t think. Just pace.

Then the door opens and before you can cower into a corner like a scared animal the man is thrown back into the cell, sent stumbling a few steps until he rights himself against the wall with his fingertips. You stand close, wary, until you notice him start to tip slowly to one side.

You don’t think, just hurry to his side and steady him. He doesn’t stand back up though, just leans onto you so that you have to adjust your grip or fall into a heap under his weight. He’s bleeding, you notice when you try to grab his arm and your hands slip on the slick blood. You try to pull away but he just falls against you again. They probably beat him, he can’t even stand up straight. You’re consider dragging him the few feet to the bed when he speaks.

“Bucky”

You’re so startled you almost let go of him “What?”

“Bucky, that’s my name.”


	4. Chapter 4

He sits on the bed silently while you try to clean his wounds as best you can without alcohol and bandages. You’ve rinsed the cuts and gashes with the rest of your water, and then ripped little pieces of the thin white sheet on the bed to dress them. It wasn’t of much use against the cold anyway.

He seems to be doing better, if not okay yet. You watch him carefully as he sits on the bed, blood dripping slowly onto the floor with a steady pittering sound. His expression is neutral, but there’s a fragility to it that wasn’t there before. He looks almost tired, resigned, instead of the tight mask of emptiness you were used to from him.

From Bucky.

What a strange name, you think. He sits there, bruised and bleeding, long dirty hair hanging over his eyes, looking both like a dangerous man and a scared boy. The name doesn’t fit, somehow. But it makes him more human.

Maybe that’s why you decide to get up and sit next to him, instead of just crouching in front of him a safe distance away. He lets you, merely glancing at you out of the corner of his eyes and then looking ahead again. The blood is seeping through the cloth already, dying it a deep crimson.

You fidget. He glances at you again.

“When I was six I fell off a tree” it’s a dumb thing to say, but you’ve already opened your mouth and the silence is already broken, it feels terrifying to try and stop the tension from taking the words from you like it’s pulling on a string. You tilt your head as you tie a knot on a makeshift bandage “hit every single branch on the way down and then just lay there for like twenty minutes.” You huff in amusement at the memory. You reach for Bucky’s arm and he gives it easily. “I didn’t start crying until my mom asked me what happened. And then she wrapped me up in bandages until I looked like a mummy, I’m sure she was secretly laughing at me.”

“Hm” Bucky says.

You exhale heavily and tie one last knot on the piece of cloth around his arm.

“I don’t remember…” when you look at him his brow is tightly furrowed, you pull your hands back in and onto your lap, but keep looking at him in case he decides to speak again.

He takes so long that you start to think maybe he won’t.

“I was opening a letter, I think. And I was having a hard time reading it because I only had a small candle lit, and it was burning down to a stump” he’s talking a bit faster now, but his voice still sounds rough and unused. “But I couldn’t read by daylight because I had work, and if I left it there then Steve would see, I don’t even remember what it said but I- I burnt it the letter. I stared at the fire until it singed my fingertips. It looked so red, like…” his head swivels around, looking at the room, but everything is dull and gray. He twists to his side, pauses to look down at his metal arm and scowls. Then he sits straight again, his mouth stays shut.

“Who’s Steve?” You whisper, when it’s clear he won’t speak again.

He looks startled. His brow furrows darkly again.

“Dunno”


	5. Chapter 5

He tells you things sometimes, snippets of time that fall from his lips desperately. Like you're keeper of memories, and he wants to give them to you before they disappear.

 

You understand.

 

Sometimes the memory is whole, though it still looks like it takes him a great deal of effort to string it together. And even then he isn't sure if he's just talking about a dream.

 

Sometimes the memory is so muddled he can only describe it one sense at a time. Particles of dust floating in a beam of light. The scent of orange peel, bright and sweet. A splinter digging into his palm, or the salty breeze spraying on his sun-heated face. The sound of brass instruments and the stomping of shoes on wooden floors. Laughter, followed immediately by a cough.

 

Sometimes he just says “I remember something” and then his eyebrows draw together, and he doesn't say anything else.

 

The first time you wake him from a nightmare he looks at you with big wet eyes and draws back from you so suddenly that his head slams into the concrete wall. He doesn't even seem to notice. Instead he surges forward to grab you by the arms, face so twisted with emotion that fear creeps up your throat.

 

“Bucky-”

 

“Please” he begs, your heart slams into your ribs “three two five… five... please” his voice is a whine.

 

“Alright” you try to pitch your voice soft, it rasps with worry instead. “Alright Bucky, I got it. Three, two, five, five. It’s okay”

 

“No” he says, a sob “noooo, there’s more, there’s more I can't re- I can’t-“

 

He looks so different, so unlike the cold shell that you first encountered when they brought you here. Not for the first time, you wonder what they’ve done to him. Because you don’t remember how you got here, and every day the thought is like the twist of a knife at your side. You can’t imagine what it’s like for Bucky. 

 

You look at him, at the bruises he’s leaving on your arms, and for the first time you worry for him more than you do for yourself. You don’t think about what awaits you, if they will make you become like him. The distraught twist of his expression chokes you like a physical thing.

 

“I’ll remember for you” it feels as though the force of your heart beat will crack your ribs “you can tell me the rest when you remember it” You can’t help the way your voice trembles when he loosens his grip, eyes growing wide and hopeful. “It’s alright Bucky, it’s okay” maybe it’s a lie, his breathing slows anyway. “Three, two, five, five, I’ll remember it for you.”

 

Bucky sags like his strings have been cut, and when you move to lean him against you he doesn’t even flinch.


	6. Chapter 6

The door opens, one day. It’s nothing like that one time they took Bucky away, when it slammed open and let chaos into your small shared cell. Instead it opens slowly and soundlessly, but the shift in the air still sets you on edge.

 

Your unease only grows when you look over at Bucky, sitting still as marble with his mask back on, and he shakes his head minutely, ‘no’.

 

A man steps into the room, it disrupts the air strangely. You first notice his shoes, sleek black and polished to a shine. It makes you feel unexpectedly dirty, you’re still in the same clothes you were taken in and you can almost feel the grime and old sweat that clings to you. The man, in comparison, looks foreign in your dark cell. He’s tall and slim, bordering on lanky, his crisp white lab coat trails behind him for a moment before stopping with a swish at his side, he looks at you over his golden wire glasses with dead grey eyes.

 

A guard comes in behind him, wearing the heavy black uniform you are used to seeing. Despite carrying several obvious guns and having a strong figure, the man in the lab coat looks far more intimidating. They leave the door open behind them and your eyes dart in that direction. Maybe you’d be able to fight the grey-eyed man at any other time, but you’re weak and underfed, and even if Bucky could take on the guard, you’ve seen nothing of this place, you don’t know if you could get out. 

 

You glance at the grey-eyed man, the right corner of his lips twitches in what could maybe be considered a smile. The look in his eye makes you feel uncomfortably like he knows exactly what you’re thinking, like a scientist that watches a lab rat run around in a maze.

 

You remember Bucky, shaking his head only a moment before. You clench a fist into the new sheet -you refuse to think of it as a kindness- and swallow the urge to run.

 

Grey-eyes hums and scribbles on his clipboard before calling to the man behind him in Russian. They share a small chuckle, and you’re so startled by the sound that you turn to look at Bucky, he doesn’t look back, but his fists clench minutely on his lap.

 

The guard steps closer and you feel the air tighten around you, he looks you up and down, and even though you feel naked under his leering gaze you suppress the urge to hug yourself. Maybe it’s stubborn and pointless, but you feel just about frozen with fear, and you refuse to give him the satisfaction of having that power over you. Instead you look him right in the eye, as if holding his gaze would keep it from wandering again.

 

His smile is much wider than the grey-eyed man’s but no less unsettling. A moment passes, your eyes water but you don’t blink. Then Grey-eyes speaks.

 

It happens so suddenly that you have no time to react. 

 

The man lunges at you and a rasping yelp escapes you in a voice that doesn’t sound like your own. You hold your clothes tightly on instinct, but he grabs at your hair and pulls harshly until you fall to the floor.

 

You yelp again, but this time in pain as you land harshly on your hip on top of hard concrete. You lay on your side for barely a second before the man is on you again. You kick at him, but only a few hits land, there isn’t enough air in your lungs for a scream. Pain blooms on your ribs from a punch, then on your cheek when you go to cover your side.

 

And then he’s gone.

 

You don’t see it happen. There’s a shift in the air around you and before you can look the room flies past your eyes. Suddenly you can only see gray concrete, cold against your burning cheek. You gasp, too late for the swoop of your stomach, and when you turn to the right it takes you a moment to understand what you’re seeing.

 

You’re pressed into a corner, and Bucky is standing over you protectively, though the tilt of his head is submissive. His arms shield most of the room from your eyes, but when you stand on the tips of your toes to look you can see the guard laying unconscious on the floor, you can only see him for a second before Bucky shifts his weight and shields your view again.

 

You fight the sob that tries to escape you, you swallow once, the again before you hear the scratch of pen on paper and then Grey-eyes speaks again. “Soldat” he says, and Bucky flinches at the word. Gray-eyes says something else in a toneless voice and Bucky nods minutely.

 

“Soldat…” the man says again, this time there’s a warning in his voice.

 

“Da” Bucky speaks for the first time since the door opened. His voice is strong and his tone doesn't give away a thing, but when you press a hand to his back both in support and from fear his muscles are locked tight. 

 

The man speaks again, this time a bit louder, and immediately more guards step into the room. You realize they were standing right outside, hidden by the walls, and you follow their movements as best you can from behind Bucky as they pick the still unconscious man from the floor and take him outside.

 

Your eyes follow them out and land unexpectedly on Grey-eyes, who is looking right at you with that unsettling all-knowing gaze. 

 

“The first one made the mistake of trying to run, you look smarter than that.” His English is heavily accented, still his words ring sharp in your mind.

 

He leaves right after, but Bucky stays locked in place for a very long time. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can come yell at me on Tumblr @soopranatural


End file.
